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  • - Are you thinking of selling your company someday?

  • Or maybe you're already in the process

  • of looking for buyers to exit, or you are a startup

  • and someday you have this dream, you have this goal

  • that you could sell your business, your company

  • for a massive windfall, right?

  • That's kind of what a lot of entrepreneurs dreamed about.

  • Now today, I'm gonna share five strategies with you

  • on how do you sell your company for massive money.

  • Now, I've had the privilege of learning from my mentor,

  • Dan Pena, the $50 billion man.

  • You might have seen some of his videos on YouTube,

  • on social media and he taught me a tremendous amount

  • when it comes to M&A, mergers and acquisitions

  • and acquiring companies and selling companies.

  • Now in my career, I have sold a handful,

  • a couple of companies for decent amount of money

  • making a decent amount of profit.

  • I've had some horrible, horrible exits

  • where I basically gave my companies away,

  • because I didn't wanna run them anymore.

  • And there were some deals that I sold

  • and I kind of broke even.

  • So I wanna share some kind of hard-learnt lessons with you,

  • the to do's and what not to do

  • and hopefully you won't make those mistakes.

  • So, strategy number one and that is EBITDA.

  • In case you don't know what EBITDA means,

  • it means earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation,

  • amortization.

  • So once you understand that, they look at your earnings,

  • meaning the more earnings that you have,

  • the more you can ask for the purchase price, right?

  • So it's very, very critical.

  • So if you are planning to sell your business,

  • if you want to get the maximum amount of money,

  • you want to have steady growth,.

  • So there're potential buyer

  • looking at your financial statements,

  • you're not at a decline.

  • Most business owners, most entrepreneurs,

  • they sell their businesses too late.

  • And I made a mistake,

  • they wait till the business plateau

  • or it's actually at a decline, they want to get out.

  • Not exit at the top

  • but they wanna kind of get out of the business,

  • then they try to sell, they are still struggling.

  • You don't wanna do that.

  • You want your business to kind of going up,

  • it's an uptick, uptrend.

  • And it's this year, this year and the last three years

  • and you see this kind of steady growth.

  • Then a potential buyer looks at that and say,

  • hey, this is pretty good, there's still potential.

  • This company is growing, the industry is growing.

  • You will be able to ask more money for them.

  • Strategy number two, risk.

  • Now, a potential buyer, business buyer

  • would also look at your business in terms of risk.

  • So let me give you some different forms of risk.

  • It could be concentration risk,

  • meaning maybe you are operating,

  • let's say you're selling retail business

  • and you have one location

  • and all your business comes from just one location.

  • Well, that's a concentration risk, right?

  • Because you're limited by that geographic area.

  • Or maybe it's there's some other developments

  • around the area

  • or you can't allow your business from schools hypothetically

  • and then the school is going somewhere else,

  • that's a concentration risk.

  • Or maybe you have 40, 30% of your business,

  • your revenue comes from one client or one business account.

  • Well, that's a concentration risk.

  • Because if that client leaves your business,

  • now you're in big trouble.

  • Let's say you're selling B2B

  • and your biggest customer is Walmart

  • and if Walmart stops buying from you, guess what?

  • You are in trouble, that's a concentration risk.

  • And there are many, many other forms of risk.

  • Maybe in terms of your technology, you don't have a patent.

  • Maybe a lot of technology that you have,

  • that you are using right now, you don't have any protection.

  • Anybody can come and kind of knock off your idea.

  • Well, that's also a problem, right?

  • That's another form of risk.

  • So a potential buyer will look at,

  • hey, how much risk am I gonna have when I buy this business?

  • What's the downside?

  • They will look at that not just the upside

  • but what's the downside.

  • Strategy number three and that is types of revenue.

  • Now, not all revenue is created equal.

  • Now, I've looked at business before

  • where this business is doing very, very well.

  • But there's one problem, there's one thing

  • that I really didn't like about the business.

  • The business will make a lot of money in certain months

  • and then a big chunk of year, they're like dead.

  • They're like this, like it's almost dead.

  • So they make all the money for the year in a couple months.

  • Now, that to me is a problem.

  • Because it means if there's anything that happens

  • within a couple months, maybe you miss something,

  • maybe If you are in farming hypothetically,

  • something happens where the weather or whatever it is,

  • like a lot outside factors affects your revenue.

  • Now that's a big risk, right?

  • On the other hand,

  • if your company has a lot of what I call, recurring revenue,

  • that to an investor, to a buyer, that's very attractive

  • because they know,

  • hey, every single month, you're gonna have recurring income,

  • recurring revenue coming in,

  • that tells me how stable the company is.

  • So if your company has certain windfall revenue

  • but you have a lot of recurring revenue,

  • suddenly you can ask for a lot more money.

  • I mean, a lot more money for your business.

  • So think about what you could do

  • to create more recurring revenue

  • if you're thinking about selling your business

  • or other types of contracts

  • that you have coming down the pipeline like

  • hey, I've got two, three, five, six big deals

  • coming down the pipeline that hey,

  • if we close those, that could be a worth a lot of money.

  • Now a good investor, a good buyer is like a candle there.

  • But it's like icing on the cake.

  • Hey you know, maybe in three, four months

  • there's some windfall that's coming in.

  • Strategy number four, your management team.

  • You could ask for more money

  • if you have a strong team in place.

  • So then a potential buyer,

  • they're not just buying your product

  • and not by just buying a business,

  • they're not buying your revenue,

  • but they also buying, acquiring your team.

  • So you put a great team together

  • so the buyer could just take over

  • without hiring a lot of new people,

  • without changing the entire management team.

  • What does makes it a lot more attractive?

  • However if your business depends 100% on you,

  • that you are the main driver, hypothetically,

  • you have a small business,

  • where you have a new consulting business and it's just you.

  • First of all, that's not sellable business,

  • no one wants to buy it because it's all you.

  • You are the one that has all the relationships

  • with all the clients and customers and accounts.

  • You're the one that's talking to them,

  • you're the one that's doing fulfillment.

  • Well, that's not a scalable business.

  • But if you take you out of the equation,

  • everything else, the team, the product,

  • everything that you have, that part of it,

  • if you take you out equation,

  • it is producing a lot of revenue or even more revenue,

  • you've got a very, very attractive business

  • that can ask for a lot of money.

  • Strategy number five and that is don't get greedy.

  • Leave some money on the table.

  • One of the mistakes I see business owners make,

  • entrepreneurs especially, they get too greedy.

  • So let's say this is your business

  • you get a debt at this point,

  • everybody wants to sell at the peak, right?

  • You wanna get the most, most amount of money,

  • maximum money for the purchase price for your business.

  • Don't do that, right?

  • Don't do that.

  • Just like, you know you could ask for this much,

  • it's just need some money on the table,

  • Leave some money on the table.

  • So then the buyer could see hey,

  • if I buy this, there's still a lot of upside,

  • that if I can improve certain things,

  • may improve customer service, bring on better people

  • or improve your marketing, I could take this,

  • maybe I could increase the revenue by 10, 15%

  • in the next 12 months.

  • That's a lot of upside for a potential buyer

  • versus you try to squeeze every dollar out of them.

  • Leave some chips on the table let them hey,

  • you know, I think we've got a great thing going on,

  • I think we've got a great business, got a great team

  • and I think there are still so many things so much potential

  • that we could squeeze out the business

  • and here's the plan.

  • There are 20 things you could do the next 12 months

  • that would actually really move the needle.

  • The potential buyer looks at this like this is great.

  • Not only am buying a proven business, great product,

  • a great brand, a great team,

  • also you've given me a great plan.

  • Now they calculate the number and say,

  • hey well, I could potentially recoup most of my capital

  • in certain period of time.

  • Maybe it's three years, is a four year deal.

  • We keep all my investment.

  • Now they say hey, this a great deal, it is a win win.

  • That's what you wanna do.

  • So don't get greedy, leave some money on the table

  • at the end of day cause you want to sell the business.

  • You spent a lot of time nurturing your baby,

  • your business is your baby.

  • So you wanna kind of give the baby to someone

  • who you know would take this baby

  • and grow it into a teenager, grow to an adult and nurture

  • and take it to a whole new level.

  • You don't want someone to buy the baby

  • and just kill the baby, that's not nice, that's not pleasant

  • unless whoever's buying it, that's the strategy

  • which sometimes happens by the way.

  • There are companies out there, they buy you out

  • just to take you out of the game

  • because they want to eliminate competitions.

  • That is a viable strategy

  • but for most, I'm talking for most,

  • we want someone to hey, this is my sweat.

  • For most this is my sweat, blood and tears

  • for the last five years, 10 years, 15 years,

  • I want someone to take care of this.

  • I want my people to be taken care of,

  • I don't want someone to come into company

  • and fire everybody else, right?

  • By all the people have been with me for 15 years,

  • I want someone hey, you're gonna take care of my people,

  • they're gonna take care of my team,

  • will still have a great job, a great place to to work in,

  • hopefully to take it to a whole new level.

  • So those are the five strategies

  • that I wanna share with you.

  • If you're thinking of selling your company

  • for maximum money or on the other hand,

  • you're thinking of buying a business, acquiring a business,

  • those are the same five factors that you should look for.

  • Now if this is the first time you are watching my video,

  • hey, I'm teaching you some good stuff, right?

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  • Keep learning, keep growing and comment below

  • if you have any questions or any future videos,

  • you want me to take this topic,

  • you want me to expand on certain things,

  • let me know as well, I'll love to hear from you.

- Are you thinking of selling your company someday?

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